>Okay, I think that I will consider my static IP situation sorted for now.
>Thanks to all who lent me their eyeballs and neural activity.  (^&
>
>
>Now I'm looking at setting up email.  Looking around at NetBSD FAQ's,
>sendmail seems to be the only one discussed.  However, a few years ago,
>postfix was put in the NetBSD distribution for "evaluation".  It's still
>in there, so I might give that a whirl.  Or, maybe something from
>pkgsrc..?
>
>I'm looking for advice.  I *have* set up sendmail before, but I never
>grokked sendmail.cf.  I don't have a big site to configure and would be
>content with a fairly small server that provides the following features:
>
> * Delivers email to local users.  (^&
>
> * Defaults to conservative behavior (e.g., when I last had sendmail
>   up, I think that it defaulted to being an open relay---*not* the
>   kind of philosophy I want in a default config for a mail server
>   that's on the Internet; though I might prefer it in a secure,
>   private network...  (^&).
>
> * Robust/simple.
>
> * Some facility for dropping in scripts (per-user or site-wide---almost
>   the same thing in my case) to filter mail in some way.
>
>
>The ideal would be to throw an rc.conf switch to turn on one of sendmail
>or postfix and have it all just come to life.  But if it involves much
>review and customization to get basic delivery to function safely, maybe I
>should look at pkgsrc.  Especially if getting a safe,
>non-a-spammer's-paradise server up requires dealing with sendmail.cf
>(say), I'd rather avoid sendmail.  (^&

Postfix is light, fast, simple to configure, secure, mostly problem free 
and powerful. It is also configured to be closed to relays by default. 
Sendmail is more popular simply because it's been around for so long. I've 
run Postfix and qmail, and stick with Postfix because of it's simplicity. 
qmail has more features (more things to go wrong) and is more difficult to 
troubleshoot than is Postfix, but is every bit as secure, powerful and 
light on resources.

In comparison to these two, sendmail is a bloated resource hungry hog that 
has had it's share of securiyy issues in the past. They mostly seem to be 
fixed now, but the configuration remains a nightmare.


>Also, on the topic: What's the future for postfix as part of the NetBSD
>distribution?  I didn't think that it was intended to have 2 mailers ship
>with NetBSD "forever".  Has that changed, or is postfix still being
>evaulated?  Or is there a thought to eventually remove either postfix or
>sendmail from the distribution?

<opinion>
Many distro's besides NetBSD are also offering Postfix as an alternative 
to sendmail, with sendmail remaining the default server. (?Bad habits are 
hard to break?) Postfix is now considered "mature", and it's license 
allows for open distribution. If DBJ would relax the licence restrictions 
on qmail, you might see 3 mail servers offered up.
I'm not on the NetBSD devel team, but this is my take on the matter.
</opinion>